Goodbye, my almost lover
Goodbye, my hopeless dream
I’m trying not to think about you
Can’t you just let me be
So long, my luckless romance
My back is turned on you
Should’ve known you’d bring me heartache
Almost lovers always do

-Almost Lovers by A Fine Frenzy
The house was quiet, too quiet if you ask me. Whenever our house was quiet, nothing good was ever going to happen. Our home was even loud when we slept, due to his obnoxiously loud snoring. It was no use trying to be quiet unless you wanted the other to think something was going wrong.

Walking into the living room, I heard the sound of a quill scratching words on parchment. I couldn’t bear to watch that, so I stood in the hallway and waited for it to seize. I didn’t care that an ant was crawling around my feet or that his coat was missing from the wooden peg that it belonged in. I just cared about what was going to happen next. It was then that it hit me and I ran as quickly as my short legs would take me into the entry hall.

He was standing precisely where I thought he would be: in front of the door and sticking a note onto the glass pane that was in the door and reached about the height of his midsection. His coat was already on and he was putting a hat over his fiery hair. He turned around when he noticed me in the tiny room.

“You can’t leave, Charlie!” I shouted, pulling on his coat.

“I have to! Don’t you understand?” he challenged, shaking my hand from his muscular arm. This action caused me to step back from him a bit. I was dumbfounded. I hated to see him so unhappy, but wasn’t he supposed to want me to be happy? Isn’t that what you do for someone you love?

“Don’t leave,” I pleaded, pulling on his coat once again. He looked at me, his eyes cutting through my body like furious knives. The feeling that ripped through me was the psychological equivalent of the physical damage that those knives could have done. Salty tears stung at my eyes as he shoved me away from him once again.

“Ava, I have to,” he said, his blue eyes searching me for a reaction for what seemed like an entire lifetime. I thought he would turn out the door at any moment, but he didn’t. He stood and waited for me to say something. Nothing would come out of my mouth, though. I tried for anything and everything, but it wouldn’t reach the tip of my tongue to escape my mouth. Not even a simple “I love you” would come from my lips as tears began to fall from my blue eyes that were so much like Charlie’s.

“C—can’t we talk about this?” I said as I wiped some of the tears from my eyes and my peaches and crème complexion cheeks. He winced at my words and turned his head away from me, but didn’t move toward the door.

“Please?” My voice was quivering at this point in time as I tugged once again at his coat. He didn’t shrug me off this time, but he took off his hat and held it in front of him. Shaking his head, he placed the woolen fedora cap back on, causing my grip on his sleeve to become tighter. Once again, he didn’t resist.

“Charlie, you can’t just leave.”

“I have to!” His raised voice frightened me, but I felt that if I let go, I would let go of him forever.

“Please, just sit down. We can talk it over.” I knew that I sounded desperate at this point in time, but I needed to in order for him to feel guilty. In the truth of things, I was desperate. I couldn’t just let him leave without knowing how I felt.

As he turned to leave once more, I yanked him toward me, leaving him astonished. He furrowed his eyebrow, visibly confused at my actions.

“You can’t leave me,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

“Don’t do this, Ava,” he said, pushing me away from him as I tried to hug him.

“What about me? How come you can do this to me?”

“Don’t turn the tables.”

“I’m not trying to.”

“Then just let me go.”

“Why should I do that? I love you, so why would I want to let you go?”

“That’s the problem.”

With those words, he left. I opened the door he had just left through and ran. I completely ignored the icy cold rain that beat down on me like frigid needles. I didn’t care that it was barely above freezing and I hadn’t a coat on my body. I just wanted Charlie.

“Don’t do this, Ava,” he said for a second time as I caught up with him on the sidewalk. My brown hair was damp and limp from the weight of the water that was coming in tear drops from the sky.

“I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m running after the man I love; what am I doing wrong?” He sighed and cupped my cheeks in his hands, causing my heart to beat far too quickly. Every time he touched me, my heart raced. It didn’t matter the hour of day or if he was angry with me.

“I love you, Charlie,” I said, choking back the tears that were threatening to fall once again. “I just want to know where you’re going and why.” I held my hands up to his face, mimicking his hands’ positions on my cheeks. I could tell that the rain wasn’t why his face was wet. Tears were also falling from his eyes.

“This is a war,” he said, his voice breaking on the last word. I looked at him, my gaze intense as I waited for the rest of his statement.

“And…I have to fight…for you.”

“Charlie, I want you to stay here. You can’t leave. What if you never come back?”

“Then,” his voice broke here. “Then I’ll know that I died trying to keep you and my family safe.”

“But you can keep me safe by staying here!”

“No I can’t. Not in the future. I have to go, please, please understand.”

“I don’t understand, but if you have to go, go.”

“I love you, Ava, and I always will.”

“I love you too.” I swallowed hard as he leaned down to kiss me. His lips were quivering as they met with mine; he was still crying. Before I knew it, his back was turned from me and he was walking to a safe Apparition point. My heart broke into millions of tiny pieces as he disappeared into the evergreen trees. I turned to walk home, the place that I was supposed to feel safe. I couldn’t feel safe without Charlie there to protect me.

I walked up to the tiny log home that we shared. As I entered, I ignored everything inside it; I didn’t even light the fireplace on that rainy night. It wouldn’t warm me anyway. I would still feel cold if Charlie wasn’t in bed next to me. I would still feel cold knowing that the next day he wouldn’t come home and talk to me about all of his dragons.

My thoughts were my only friends that evening. They weren’t the best friends a woman could ask for either. They kept telling me to forget about him. My thoughts of him wouldn’t leave me alone, though. I didn’t want them to, even if it would have been best for me. I told myself that it was a luckless and hopeless romance to keep running after. Charlie was set on being noble and heroic, even if it risked his never coming home again.

I turned on my back so that it would face where he would have been. Perhaps turning my back on his indent in the bed, he would understand that I was turning my back on him just as he had just done to me. If more heartache was to come, let it. It would be the first step in letting go, no matter how much I wanted to hang on.

Lying to myself wasn’t the answer. I should have known that telling myself that my love for Charlie was hopeless would just make things worse. Nothing would change the way I felt for him, even if he never came home. I would always love him with all of my broken heart and pray that he would come home safely. That was all I wanted. Even if he did die, I wanted him to die knowing that I loved him with all I had and would never stop loving him. I wanted him to know that if he died, I’d meet him in heaven when my time came.A/N: I could have done this for any pairing easily, but since I did this for a challenge, I chose to give myself a challenge. I chose to do a pairing that I have never done before: Charlie/OC. Having said that, reviews are very, very much appreciated for this fic.